CHROMiX ColorNews Issue #34 - Color Management in Photoshop CS4 |
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Welcome to ColorNews, a periodic update on things related to Color Management. We strive for a newsletter of high value to our readers. Please let us know your interests so we can address these concerns in future issues. ======================================================== C H R O M i X C O L O R N E W S - 10th Anniversary Issue
Issue # 34
Happy Thanksgiving (this week) to all US recipients. CHROMiX will be closed 11/27 to celebrate. Table of Contents =================
1. CHROMiX News - CHROMiX is 10 years old!
CHROMiX News ======================================== CHROMiX is 10 years old!!! It's 10 years from when Steve Upton first started the company. Wow.. time flies when you're having fun! @ CHROMiX. Raise your glass please.... To commemorate this milestone, we're having a 10th Anniversary 1 month Sale and slashing prices on 2 Eizo LCD models to ultra-low levels. See Eizo Ad below.
ColorShuttle, Maxwell's client application, now directly supports the i1 and iSis hardware and uploads measurements right into Maxwell Tracks for immediate use anywhere in the world. It is currently in limited release and will go into a much wider release after the PIA/GATF Color Conference in December. We appreciate the patience of everyone who's been waiting for the Shuttle to arrive. If you are on the original Maxwell beta or announcement list, you will receive notification of ColorShuttle's release. DisplayWatch is a service provided by ColorShuttle and Maxwell where any system's display can be continuously monitored for calibration updates and calibration and profiling data is uploaded into Maxwell for tracking and notification alerts. DisplayWatch will be available for beta testing at the same time ColorShuttle is released.
As a reminder, a Track is any item (printer, paper, monitor, etc.) whose activity you want to monitor. Also, Notifiers within Maxwell alert you when the item associated with the Track falls outside of tolerances or fails to meet certain requirements.
For complete Maxwell product information, go to www.mxwell.com
SHOWS & EVENTS ================
December 2nd, Color Control Freak, Portland, Oregon (an all-day color management seminar training) sponsored by X-Rite, MacForce and the Pacific Northwest Color Management Users Group - Portland Chapter www.pnwcmug.com
Color, Product & Industry News
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Adobe began shipping CS4 On October 15th. and
Finally, for a unique CHROMiX perspective don't miss Pat Herold's review below in this issue's article, 'Color Management in Adobe Photoshop CS4'
Techkon USA is offering an additional 10% off selected SpectroDens, SpectroPlate and SpectroDrive models through end of November as a continuation of their Graph Expo specials. Hurry, any orders must be placed by Nov. 28th. Please call CHROMiX Sales for details or questions.
X-Rite is offering a very generous mail-in rebate from Oct. 26th through Nov. 30, 2008. Receive an additional $500 for combined purchase values over $3999, and $1000 for combined purchases over $10,000. ALL X-Rite products and solutions apply. The promotion mail-in deadline is 12/31/08. See other details in Ad below.
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Color Management in Adobe Photoshop CS4
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Color Management in Photoshop CS4
With the recent release of Adobe Photoshop CS4, plenty have written about the new features in this newest version of the gold standard in image manipulation. This month's article will present an overview of what's new in Photoshop's color management.
Incidentally, CHROMiX ColorNews newsletters are always sent out in text-only format as a courtesy to our readers (to not fill up their inboxes with large emails.) As a result, this current article might seem rather dry without pictures of what we're referring to. So we encourage all who can to browse over to the www.colorwiki.com site and see the Reserved Article version of this issue.
There, we have posted screen shots of all the dialog boxes we mention here.
(Edit > Color Settings)
At first glance, the Color Settings dialog box is relatively unchanged from the previous versions. Under the hood, however, you'll find that several new profiles are included. If you click the drop down box for Working Spaces: CMYK, you will find the latest GRACoL and SWOP profiles from the 2006 specs.
Those who have a need to convert to a larger CMYK working space than the often-used "US Web Coated SWOP2" profile will find that the Coated GRACoL 2006 profile is a great improvement in gamut, and is a good representation of a press running to a G7 standard.
Also note an additional checkbox under Conversion Options: "Compensate for Scene-referred Profiles." It is recommended that this checkbox stay checked, unless you are trying to duplicate colors in other programs that do not compensate for scene-referred profiles. Color profiles are said to be scene-referred if their tone-response curves are based on the conditions in the typical scene. Color profiles are said to be output-referred if their tone-response curves are based on the conditions in the typical viewing environment. This choice may be more important to those working with moving pictures and video. Check the Photoshop help menus for more information on scene-referred profiles.
PRINTING
(File > Print)
The left side of this dialog box features some new soft-proofing options. There are now check boxes allowing you to see a gamut warning and/or simulate your paper white right here in the preview window. Previously, you would have had to go to the View > Proof setup > Custom section to view your image with these features.
The top center of this page now has a small printer icon next to the Printer selection box. This button will automatically bring up the printer maintenance utility program for the printer selected. This is a great way to check your inkjet nozzles just before printing a big job.
The right side of the page is essentially the same on CS4 as it was with CS3. You still choose whether you want Photoshop, or the printer, to manage colors (or whether you want No Color Management), and you choose your rendering intent, black point compensation, etc.
SOFT PROOFING
(View > Proof Setup > Custom)
This section is unchanged from previous versions of CS, except for the multi-color profile issue I'll be mentioning below.
CONVERT TO PROFILE
(Edit > Convert to Profile...)
While the "Assign Profile" dialog box has not changed, the Convert to Profile dialog has much more functionality. Click the new "Advanced" button, and you are now presented with a choice of almost any profile type you can think of. Just like before, you can still convert to an RGB, CMYK or Gray profile, but now you have the added ability to:
- Convert directly to the Lab color space
Each of these choices comes with a drop down box so you can choose which profile you want to use in each category.
MULTICHANNEL PROFILES
Just a note here: We are not talking about profiles for a typical modern inkjet printer that has more than the usual four inks. Multi channel profiles (or "n-color" profiles) are very specialized animals that handle 5, 6, 7 or more inks, and only work on certain multichannel printers/presses and the rare RIPs that can process multi channel printing.
The ability to convert to a multichannel profile is a big step for Photoshop, and those who work with a Roland 6-channel printer using spot colors (or some such monster) will be pretty excited to add this useful tool to your arsenal. Epson is rumored to be coming out with new printers that will be using multichannel inks, so this feature may have wider applications in the future.
While the conversion to multichannel profiles works very well - the preview or visual display of that profile conversion does not. According to Adobe, the calculation required to do an accurate soft proof of these profiles would take so long as to be unusable at this point in time. However, they did want to make available this conversion to multichannel separations, and didn't want to remove the feature just because the soft proofing was not there yet.
(We should note that CHROMiX has patent-pending technology called ColorCast which creates specialized soft proofing profiles that will accurately soft proof multi-channel profile conversions quickly and accurately. ColorCast is available as an optional add-on for ColorThink Pro 3. visit www.chromix.com/pro_colorcast
For those worried about having to learn a new interface, the Adobe folks have left alone that which works well. But they have snuck in more functionality in reasonable places where you need it and want it. While they don't yet have accurate previews using multicolor profiles, the ability to convert to multicolor separations in Photoshop has been on the wish list for many years with many printers, and its inclusion might come to be very timely in the near future.
Patrick Herold
Tech support, CHROMiX
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There is much more information on these subjects in our ColorNews archives in previous articles and color management myths, so check out the Reserved Articles section of www.colorwiki.com for more information.
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Entire Contents of CHROMiX ColorNews (c)2008 CHROMiX, Inc. CHROMiX, Maxwell, ColorThink, ColorNews, ColorSmarts, ColorGear, ColorForums and ProfileCentral.com are trademarks of CHROMiX Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. CHROMiX ColorNews is intended as an informative update to CHROMiX customers and business associates. We are not responsible for errors or omissions.
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